The decisions came months ahead of the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, which currently has a BJP government headed by Vasundhara Raje.

Ismail Khurd of the Jhunjhunu district has been renamed as Pichanwa Khurd, Miyon ka Bara in Barmer district has been renamed as Mahesh Nagar while Narpada in Jalore district has been renamed as Narpura, an official source said.

ANI reported the renaming on August 9.

Rajasthan government changes name of Barmer’s Miyon ka Bara village to Mahesh Nagar, Jalore’s Narpada to Narpura and Jhunjhunu’s Ismailpur to Pichanwa Khurd.

The names were changed after the home ministry received no objections from the Ministry of Railways, Department of Posts and Survey of India.

The decisions to change the names were taken by the Ministry of Home Affairs following three separate proposals from the Rajasthan government.

Another source said there have been demands from the villagers, “as the names of the villages gave the impression that the village was inhabited by Muslims, there were difficulties for the residents to receive matrimonial proposals.”

The village Mahesh Nagar has a 1,400-strong population. According to a report in the Hindu, Tahir Samma, sub-divisional magistrate of Siwana tehsil, said that the village’s name was ‘Mahesh Ro Bado’ before Independence was changed to Miyon ka Bara over time.

“The residents were facing difficulty in finding marriage proposals for their children because of the village’s name. They approached the government authorities with the request to change the name,” Samma was quoted as saying.

The renaming of the three Rajasthan villages came in the wake of changing the name of Mughalsarai railway station to Deen Dayal Upadhyay junction in Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the home ministry has not yet received the West Bengal government’s proposal to change the name of the state from West Bengal to ‘Bangla’.

The West Bengal Assembly had passed a resolution on July 26 for this.

The last time that a state changed its name was in 2011, when Orissa became Odisha. The name of Bombay was changed to Mumbai in 1995, Madras to Chennai in 1996, Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001.

The central government also approved the name changes for 11 cities of Karnataka, that include Bangalore to Bengaluru, in 2014.